How to find the right people for your projects

Discover our tips for finding talent with the skills needed for project success.

You’ve identified the change you need to deliver. You've pitched your business case. You've had the budget signed off. So, how will you find the right people?

Resourcing a project is arguably the most important part of initiating a project. Without people with the necessary hard and soft skills needed to deliver change, you will inevitably incur costs and delays further down the line.

Take a look at our top tips to help you find the right talent for your change projects:

Make it your priority

Without a fully capable and resourced project team, your project is at risk of failure. So, we recommend you make resourcing your priority and own it yourself. One of the simplest ways of getting this right is ensuring you invest enough time scoping what is required, evaluating skills sets and time required to perform project tasks.

Find the correct talent blend

To deliver a project, we recommend looking for two types of subject matter experts (SMEs). Look for business and sector SMEs, along with change delivery SMEs. Business and sector SMEs will help ensure you have enough business knowledge to determine if the project solution is fit for purpose. Change delivery SMEs will be able to define how the solution can be delivered and integrated in the business.

The blend of these two types of resources depends on the nature of the project. The level of sector technicalities and the complexity of the change being delivered should also be taken in to account. However, the key message is that no project will work using 100% of one resource. A blend of resources should be considered.

Flexible workforce

Many organisations are reliant on contractors to deliver change. This has a range of delivery impacts on budgets, sustainability and knowledge retention. One of the most effective ways of ensuring your resourcing costs stay within budget is to build highly flexible and adaptive project teams. These teams should include resources who can take on hybrid roles across different capabilities.

Accenture’s TechVision 2017 research highlights the trend towards an increasingly 'liquid and flexible' workforce. 85% of Chief Executives expect to increase their use of non-permanent employees in the coming years. Leading organisations are also looking at how they use new technologies such as Upwork to move to less bureaucratic resourcing models. These technologies enable them to assemble project teams with the right blend of skills, whether in-house or externally.

Leverage the 'millennial' workforce

A recent EY workplace survey identified that Generation Y (aka millennials) employees are viewed as the best at being tech savvy. And social media opportunists who leverage social media beyond marketing (70%). They also outscored boomers for being the best at collaboration, adaptability and being entrepreneurial. So, leveraging the millennial workforce could provide fresh ideas, increased collaboration, adaptability and entrepreneurial ability.

Make a contingency plan

Even if you make resourcing a priority, get the correct blend of SMEs, build a flexible workforce and leverage millennials, you may still face unexpected challenges. Having a resource contingency plan will help significantly reduce the impact on delivering your project successfully.

The time you spend on creating your plan could save you more time if the worst case scenario happens. Therefore, make sure you create a contingency plan that details what you will do if you need back up resources on short term notice.

Grayce provide the best graduate talent to organisations across the UK. Our Analysts have the technical ability and communication skills needed to support successful project delivery.